Smallholding
Gwenna / Sunflowers / Dahlias
Monday 15 August, 2022
Monday 8th August
I love dahlias. These are from Sarah Raven; the Venetian Collection. Just hope I can manage to keep them for next year. I have a poor record so far.
Dahlias.
Tuesday 9th August
It’s like autumn here – I guess the lack of water is making the trees drop leaves early.
Gwenna / Health tests / Bannockyarn
Monday 8 August, 2022
Monday 1st August Lammas
Dan collected Gwenna this afternoon. She’s bright in herself, and her back legs move but she can’t take any weight on them. Between feeding, medication and physio (5 times daily), Dan’s made a spreadsheet to keep us right. The drugs should be finished in two weeks, fingers crossed but the physio will be six weeks at least. I was a bit upset at the vet report – her prognosis is given as fair to good but we’ll give her the best chance we can.
Gwenna / Potatoes / Poppy
Monday 1 August, 2022
Monday 25th July
Nicely wet today.
I had to take Gwenna to the vet this morning. Not sure what’s wrong but she was in a lot of pain. The vet couldn’t even examine her, because she was rigid. She’s had two painkiller injections, has had a pee (allowed out on the lead only) and two scrambled eggs. She’s now asleep. She goes back to the vet tomorrow morning.
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Poorly Gwenna.
Bovine Love Island / Bricks / Roses
Monday 25 July, 2022
Monday 18th July
Hot. But not as hot as forecast. The media does love to create a crisis. Folk go on holiday to enjoy temperatures like this.
Alistair, our vet, was out just after lunchtime to jag the four female cattle with a hormone to bring them into season – sadly, this means they will slip any calf they are carrying, but we don’t have the facilities to calve indoors, so we just have to bite that particular bullet. I asked him to do an internal on Baby and on Blizzard. I’ve never seen Baby what I would call “properly” in season. She wasn’t in calf, not surprisingly, but ovaries, tubes etc were all present and correct, so hopefully she’ll come into season and get in calf now. Blizzard was about six weeks in calf, which is a bit sad but also good news – if she can do it once, she should be able to do it again. I wanted Alistair to check all was well after quite a difficult calving last year – and it was.
Flowers / Kirrie Show / Birthday
Monday 18 July, 2022
Monday 11th July
Pulled all the beetroot – a good crop from a metre or so of bed. The variety was Moneta on a seed tape. Got them all cooked and pickled and I’ve sown another three half rows – that was all the tape I had left. Would definitely do the tape again. Having said that NONE of the parsnips on the tape germinated.
Beetroot Moneta from seed tape .
Grey / Cabbage / Blueberries
Monday 11 July, 2022
Monday 4th July
Dry, some sun and a rather brisk breeze. I don’t know what happened to last week, but my To Do list is scarily long. Keeping too many plates spinning.
After tea, we gave the lambs their second Covexin vaccination, did all the sheep with Clik and tagged the lambs going away on Thursday. I put Spotinor on all the cattle this morning. The flies are awful. Smokey needs two good coverings with repellent every day.
Tuesday 5th July
You take your eyes of the garden and the weeds are rampant. The peas are especially bad because they cling to the weeds making harvesting difficult. Anyway, made a start.
Peas / Sweet peas / Last course
Monday 4 July, 2022
Monday 27th June
Wish we’d done the sheep yesterday. It didn’t rain but there’s rain forecast for much of the rest of the week. I need to get my head down and get through a pile of office stuff. No excuses. No diversions.
Wednesday 29th June
Today was all about peas – sweet and sweeter. Strawberries are coming well now and we have raspberries round in the wood. Not where we planned, but we’ll happily take them.
Strawberry / Royal Highland Show / New car
Monday 27 June, 2022
Monday 20th June
The day didn’t quite get off to the planned start – we both forgot to take the meat birds’ feed out last night, so rather than getting on with that job first thing, we had to wait a bit for them to “empty”.
Still, that gave me time to bake a couple of fruit tea loaves and some ginger nuts and get some of my paperwork done.
In the end, we had nine whole birds, totalling 29.52, average 3.28, range 2.61 – 3.92 and one portioned bird. Plus necks, feet, heads for dog feed.
Weaning / Buddha / Tubs
Monday 20 June, 2022
Monday 13th June
Cloudy, mild and still breezy, although not blowing the hoolie at was over the weekend.
Focussed on getting through the paperwork – I’ve got a couple of newsletters to do, including one for the Festival. And I do need to spend some time on the Festival this week. The trick is not to get distracted by social media.
Bronte and Baby, just because.
Bronte and Baby.
Wall / Pipes / Willow
Monday 13 June, 2022
Monday 6th June
It seems to be a time of “lasts”. This morning we took sheep to the abattoir for the last time; two cull ewes and two wethers from last year. I hope the rest can all be sold for breeding.
It’s cold today and I’m tired. I’ve got the ponies to do for the next three days; I can’t be bothered poo picking today. Will do double tomorrow.
Ploughed through paperwork and random tasks, accompanied by much sighing and yawning.
